Pages & Proofs

Food and music – a good combination. Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand is a former kitchen porter, chef and kitchen washer upper from Glasgow. In 2004, his rock band Franz Ferdinand enjoyed a series of hits and embarked on a world tour. As Kapronos toured the world, he toured the world’s restaurants and wrote about them for The Guardian. Sound Bites is a collection of those essays about food, eating and restaurants from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires and South Shields.

Watch our video to enjoy gorgeous die-cut edition of a 17th century poem called I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tale. This version of the well-known folk tale from England was published by TaraBooks and is s illustrated by Ramsingh Urveti.

I love this signed photo of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes author has a phenomenal handlebar moustache and must have preened it prior to having the photo taken. While we’re talking about the great man, here is a video of Conan Doyle from 1928 discussing his famous detective with an appearance from Doyle’s dog. The writer died two years after this interview.

Well done to English PEN for a successful charity book auction of annotated first editions last night. The sale raised £439,200 for English PEN’s campaigns for freedom of expression, reports the BBC.

A rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with annotations and drawings by author JK Rowling, has sold for a record price. After a bidding war between two buyers the book sold for £150,000, a new record for a printed book by Rowling.

It was great to see that the second-highest price (£30,000) was for a copy of Matilda by Roald Dahl, with new illustrations by Quentin Blake. Definitely a night for children’s literature.

Virgin boss Richard Branson has revealed how he was heavily influenced by Luke Rhinehart’s Dice Man books in the early stages of his business career.

The original Dice Man novel, a fictional memoir, was published in 1971 and it tells tells the story of a psychiatrist who makes decisions according to the throw of a dice. The book switches between the first- and third-person, and also uses epistolary themes.

Luke Rhinehart is the pen name of George Cockcroft. The author was inspired to write the story after using dice to select his own experiences as a student. In some places, the novel tackles some controversial issues. Rhinehart wrote two further Dice Man novels, The Search for the Dice Man and Adventures of Wim.

In the New York Public Library, you will find an exhibit of the real Winnie the Pooh animals: Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, Tigger and Pooh. The animals belonged to Christopher Milne, son of the author, A.A. Milne and the books were donated to the New York Public Library in 1987 by the publisher of the Pooh books . Piglet looks worn but fantastic. Pooh looks decidedly sad – as if being locked up in a library is driving him crazy.

The book receiving the most attention in the UK is not Dan Brown’s Inferno but a book about poverty – This Boy: A Memoir of Childhood by Alan Johnson.  The author was Home Secretary from 2009 until 2010, and has been the MP for Hull West since 1999, but this memoir is all about his early years in west London. Chris Mullin reviewed the book in The Guardian and was very positive about it.

Johnson, who was to hold five Cabinet posts including that of home secretary, was born five years after the war at the wrong end of pre-gentrification Notting Hill or, to be more precise, North Kensington. It was a world of slum landlords, gang warfare, race riots and, it must be said, a strong sense of community. His first home was two rooms in a tenement that, even before the war, had been declared unfit for habitation. There was no indoor toilet, no bathroom, the kitchen was a stove on the landing and the electricity was metered, which meant the family were constantly scrabbling for shillings and often had to rely on candles for light. As a young teenager he recounts walking the streets with an old pram scavenging for coal and the repeated humiliation of having to ask local shopkeepers for goods on tick.

The book describes two strong women – Alan’s mother, Lily, and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a young age. It describes an era of west London not mentioned much today – the post World War II slums along with the race and crime problems.

The Daily Telegraph writes about Jane Hilton’s latest book of photography, Precious, which details brothels in Nevada. Most of the nude portraits are taken in the rooms used for sex. The brothels have names like the Playmate Ranch and Sharon’s Bar and Brothel, and they seem to be in remote locations. Nevada is only state in America where prostitution is legal. Hilton is photographer and filmmaker from London. Her previous book was Dead Eagle Trail about America’s modern cowboys.

Mrs Dalloway was published on this day in 1925. It was Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel and published by the Hogarth Press. The Vanessa Bell-designed dust jacket is something to behold. The novel famously details a June day in the life of 51-year-old Clarissa Dalloway – a society lady in post-World War I England – as she prepares to host a party.

Lots and lots of Dan Brown stories today. The Guardian says Inferno will be the biggest book of the year. I have no doubt about that. The Daily Telegraph makes fun of Brown and how he is going to be mauled by the critics… again. We also learn that Dan Brown hangs upside down in order to defeat writer’s block. Meanwhile Florence is hoping for a boost in tourism on the back of Inferno. And the people having a really bad time are the book’s translators. If you want a signed copy of Inferno then several are already available